July 18, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



103 



in the northern part of the island, where 

 there were two large idols representing 

 the sun and moon, and a pictograph evi- 

 dently of the sun, and niches for the re- 

 ception of minor idols. 



It is an instructive and suggestive fact 

 that the human race was believed to have 

 emerged from the same cave, and on their 

 advent upon the earth's surface men had 

 the forms of various animals. The strange 

 parallelism between this belief of the An- 

 tillean and that of the aborigines of the 

 continent of America can be readily ex- 

 plained by a common theory, for in both 

 cases these animals were clan totems. 



The next aspect of the cult of the zemis, 

 as derived from historical sources, is also 

 significant in attempts at interpretation. 

 Several of the older authors speak of the 

 custom among the Antilleans of painting 

 their bodies and faces, affirming that the 

 cacique painted a figure of his zemi on 

 his body, following in other words an al- 

 most universal custom among primitive 

 m^n of decorating himself with his totem. 

 There is good evidence that the totem 

 as used by North American tribes was 

 primarily a man's name and mark, and 

 that etymologically the word refers to the 

 pigment or earth used in painting a dis- 

 tinctive mark on the body. A strict ab- 

 horrence of incest and the necessity of 

 bodily marks to distinguish members of 

 the same elan naturally led to designs on 

 the body which took the form of animals 

 and plants or other natural objects. From 

 their simple method of designating mem- 

 ber clans by bodily markings so that a man 

 could recognize his relatives has sprung a 

 system of theoretical totemism which has 

 been exaggerated by many well-known 

 writers. Primarily the zemi which the 

 Antillean painted on his body corresponds 

 with the totem of the North American and 



zemeism is practically another name for 

 totemism, a form of ancestor worship. 



Certain statements of some of the older 

 writers can be ciuoted to show that the An- 

 tilleans derived the clan from the zemi 

 by descent. Herrera speaks of zemis named 

 from ancestors, a statement Tejada in his 

 valuable history of San Domingo repeats 

 with addition. These supernatural beings 

 personated by images of stone, clay and 

 wood, or represented in paint on the bodies 

 of the cacique, are said to be ancestral, or 

 representations of the clan ancients point- 

 ing to the belief that zemeism was a form 

 of ancients or ancestor worship, the indi- 

 vidual zemis being tutelary clan ancients. 



Other indirect evidence of ancestor wor- 

 ship can be found in the description given 

 by early writers of certain objects found in 

 the West Indies. 



The sight of human skulls and bones in 

 Carib houses, taken in connection with the 

 stories of cannibalism with which the 

 minds of the early discoverers were filled, 

 naturally led to the belief that the Caribs 

 were anthropophagous and the name Carib 

 subsequently passed into literature as a 

 synonym of cannibal. 



It appears that the skulls of the defunct 

 were preserved and kept in tlie houses, and 

 it is probable that the sight of these heads 

 led to the distorted accounts of cannibal- 

 ism among the Caribs, which were found in 

 the writings of the sixteenth century 

 and copied with gruesome ejabellishments 

 by later authors. The preservation of the 

 skulls or other parts of the body of their 

 ancestors is simply an aspect of ancestor 

 worship which runs through the zemi cul- 

 tus and is all-important in the religious 

 ideas of all the Antillean aborigines. Al- 

 though these preserved skulls were once 

 so numerous, so far as I know only one 

 specimen of human skull and body pre- 

 served as an object of worship has found 



